Posts Tagged childhood pneumonia

I was watching something a few weeks ago about pneumonia in this area where everyone lived in poverty. The conditions were horrible, all the children were sick often, many dying — not just from pneumonia, but the focus of what I was watching was specifically on that point.

One of the health professionals going to the area was pointing out the obvious; the children were getting sick at this rate and severity because of the conditions of the environment they had to live in. They were not being provided the necessary prevention — nor were they receiving the required medical care when there was an infection.

One of the mothers of the children was interviewed, and was sharing her story of what the doctor told her, which was that she must get out of this place. She said that she pointed out to the doctor that she does not have a choice. Where would she go, and how would she get there, and how would she survive if she did make it to another place? What are her options — living in poverty with others or living in poverty isolated from others? The woman, if she left, would very likely end up in yet another environment that was essentially the same. And how was she expected to drag the child along on the trip while the kid was so sick? From what I’m looking at here, the advice given to her by the doctor, if followed, would actually not benefit the woman and her child at all, but rather possibly only add to their suffering.

How do you have choice in this world if you don’t have money? She doesn’t have money; she doesn’t have choice.

Money would make it possible to not even have areas like this even EXIST in this world. Money changes the whole situation — and yet, we’ve designed things in such a way that this woman, for example, does not have equal access to money and, thus, no access to proper medical care, sufficient living conditions, et cetera, for herself and her child.

The Equal Money System would make it so that each of the human beings I saw in this documentary would suddenly have a completely different life experience; having the same opportunity and access as a millionaire does in today’s world. We’d see the immediate end of poverty, and we’d have quality medical care that ALL would have access to.

Then there were hospital scenes. During a moment with one of the families, who were there because the little son had pneumonia, it is learned that his treatment will be stopped because only a certain amount was funded for him and his treatment expenses had reached that limit. And that’s it — no money, no treatment; no treatment, the child is forced to likely die soon after. No choice for the child either — from the start within such a life. The father asks everyone he can for money, trying to gather enough to continue the boy’s treatment. A life-or-death decision for this child, having to be placed into the hands of others — and why the hands of others? Because there’s MONEY in those hands. We should have access to what we require merely because we are here.

How do we allow such shit to exist? Would you want to live like that? Make it so that no-one has to. We can make a world where we would not hesitate even for a moment walking the life experience of anyone else on this planet. It is time we actually do it. It is time that we correct what can be corrected while we have a shot at doing so.